As the debate over global warming is heating up worldwide, China has made its intention explicit that it will not allow any international action on climate change to undermine its economic development. While accusing west for global warming China government has said that the rich industrialized nations must take the lead to cut greenhouse emissions as they bear ‘unshirkable responsibility’ for causing global warming.
Evidently huge economic growth and population couple with inferior and inefficient industry has caused China to be the second largest carbon emitter after the U.S. According to a latest data, power generating capacity of China in 2006 increased by an amount equivalent to the entire capacity of UK and Thailand. However, thanks to its huge population that helped keeping per capita emission far below the global average.
The Chinese authorities have reiterated that the country was serious about tackling climate change; however it needs time to introduce advanced environmental technology which is available to developed nations.
Moreover, there are high chances that china would undertake a more pro active approach to reduce carbon emissions as a recent official report has stressed that warming could intensify China’s water shortage and damage agriculture.
Obviously, developing nations would find it hard to shift to clean energy as they would be required to divert a great amount of money to completely change the energy structure and adopt clean energy technology. And this is the reason why developing nations are reluctant to discuss what role they can play to reduce carbon emission after the existing provisions of Kyoto Protocol due to expire in 2012.